JianYang

That's not easy. I think I'm starting to understand why I suck so much at games with Mario inspired physics.

Guys, I feel you're holding out on me. Just to be absolutely clear: I don't expect you to justify why you think a game is in a similar category as MM/JSW. I'm not going to judge you, if I disagree. I'm just curious and hoping to discover a few good games. @Spider : Thank you. Good game. I was aware of its existence, but had never given it any significant play time. The bottom half of the main character looks suspiciously familiar.

I thought that too. Then I thought "That's clever - Fest-Vial! I bet Willy will have to collect some potions." But from @UncleWan's reaction it seems to be a typo. But maybe you (unclewan) could consider solving the issue by changing some item graphics to vials, which in my (not so perfect) understanding of the English language are little bottles. Maybe a stupid idea. I don't know. I'm pretty exhausted. I couldn't even make it past the second screen. So my review is just: What I've seen looks really nice.

I'm so glad I clicked this link. I'm usually not a fan of AI images, but this might just be the greatest Miner Willy picture ever. Happy new year!

Just a guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coal_Board

For me the closest match I have found are Meat Boy/Super Meat Boy that are puzzly, platformy and have quite minimal inputs. The next closest thing would be The Lost Vikings. Puzzly, platformy, but far from minimal inputs. On the non-platformer side maybe Hill Climb Racing. I guess it`s mostly the three button inputs and difficulty in getting over obstacles. What are your favourite somewhat-similar-to-MM-or-JSW games?

The promised update. I've made it through. Thank you for the infinite lives. I'd probably still be fighting level 3 or 4 without them. One small criticism in-I think-level 4 "...(again)" the guardians seem to be moving a bit too randomly. Sometimes you get two right behind each other without a chance to jump both at the same time or jump between them and make it out again. I understand that that's true to the source material, but it feels a bit off in a Manic Miner game. It was all still great fun. Possible inspirations for more levels: Adventure, Lemmings, Ant Attack, 3D Monster Maze, (New) Rally X, Tetris, Space Harrier, Sonic I have no ideas how these levels would look, but I would be interested to see your take on them.

Congratulations on that level design. That Pong level looks easy and then I keep dying and dying. Some real Matthew Smith vibe there. The second level (I'm trying to avoid spoilers) looked a bit harder and was a little easier but not by much. On level 3 now. I noticed once that I clearly overlapped with one of the guardians. Could be intentional and/or a nod to the source material. I'm just mentioning it. I'm pretty impressed. Any chance you could make native Android and (GNU-)Linux builds? It works fine with Wine and I might try Winlator, but native versions would be really great. I'll let you know if I make it through the game.

Maybe troll wasn't a great word, but in the cold room there's the shaft with the crumbling floors and next to it there's an empty shaft that looks like it would lead to fall damage/death. But if you have all the items collected you can exit the room through the empty shaft without getting hurt. So he sends you down a wrong path that takes a lot more time and is actually more dangerous than the drop through the empty shaft. In this sense it could be a similar thing of showing the player a maneuverable path that he can choose to collect the item from below or take a much smaller risk and collect it from above. Red herring? False lead? I don't know what to call it, but there's a precedent for something like this. But I agree most likely it's an oversight/design flaw. Looking forward to your Easter egg.

I'm glad we cleared that up. Now your main question is pretty much a philosophical one. I don't have an answer, but I'll give you some thoughts. In my head there are three classes of Manic Miner engines: - Bug-compatible: I don't think they exist in the real world. Unless someone puts in the work to develop a Z80 recompiler, they might never happen. - Bug-fixed: I think most engines are in this category. - Loose recreations: Games that look like MM, but take lots of liberties. I tried but couldn't manage to get stuck in a piece of wall, so I don't think you were going for bug-compatible. For 15.8 levels it feels like a bug-fixed version and then when jumping into the exit I fall to my death. It is surprising. In a way it jumps from one category to another. Do these categories matter to you? They may not even have existed outside of my head until I just wrote them down. Will this change surprise most players? Probably. My gut reaction always seems to be: this should be more like the original. But then I can play the original pretty much on any device with a CPU and a display. In the end as a player I probably get more out of versions that take some liberties. One more question might be: Did Matthew Smith intend people to collect the last item from below? We cannot be certain, but it looks a lot like it. Is it a design bug? Is it a design flaw? Maybe it's supposed to be troll? Until I played the first version that changed this, I never even thought of my strategy to collect the last item from the top as a short cut. Maybe as a final thought: the most extreme love letter to Manic Miner, @DigitalDuck's Manic Miner Redux, went the way of recreating the levels as original as possible and also including a second set of fixed/improved versions. Which might just show how difficult of a question this is. That's a lot of thoughts without even really attempting to answer the question. Maybe this will help: There is no One True Way to do Manic Miner, trust your gut.

I was just trying to give others a little heads up while giving you a compliment in a "Yeah, you got me" kind of fashion while also trying to add a bit of humour. Clearly that didn't work out. Don't worry I like your version.

Just for the record: that was my way of saying "Nice challenge."

Very nice overall. Very naughty what you did to Sixteenth Cavern.

No Linux version? :-(

Almost 9 years ago. Wow! Thank you for digging that out.